Here’s what I know about you so far: You are a person full of love and hard work. Graduating early with a 4.0, working and dancing, like, thirty hours a week—who does that? You love that Willa kid. She adores you, and those little girls you teach were crowding around you after THE NUTCRACKER like they worship you. Which I think they do. I like little kids a lot, and the way people interact with them tells me a ton about who that person is. Kids and dogs.
Your family seems to know you really well. I’m going to see what I can find out. In exchange, I’ll send you reciprocal fun-filled information via email about me and tell you all about the dates we would have gone on. All the WHEN HARRY MET SALLY stuff. This will get you more information about me than if you spoke to my family, as my dad’s English kind of sucks and my mom still hates you, so I feel like it’s pretty even. Good times. The Ice hasn’t turned you Chinese by chance? Calm down. I’m mostly kidding.
I plan on bragging to anyone who’ll listen that I know a person who lives there. (Temporarily. I hope.) Seriously, how did you manage that? What seventeen-year-old does that? And I wasn’t going to mention dancing, because—obviously—but I’ll say this one last time and never again if you don’t want to hear it and PS, destroy this letter once you read it. BUT. You dancing in that falling snow was maybe the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in my life. Ever.
Be safe. Have an adventure. Come home.
Owen
The museum pancake date was ours.
I never wrote him back. And now he’s having “lunch” with Kate.
I open my email.
So many from Owen. Still coming in on a semiregular basis.
I choose a random email from Kate and hold my breath.
>>>I love you. Forgive me.
I open another.
>>>I’m sorry. Please forgive me.
The most recent one.
>>>Come home.
I open Willa’s second and only other email. Her new babysitter is nice but is allergic to tree nuts, so now they can’t have peanut butter in their kitchen, ever. Lindsay, it seems, is such a bad teacher that Willa has stopped taking class. So have many of the other kids. Then a PS from Hannah:
>>>Don’t listen to Willa. Lindsay’s not that bad. It’s just without you teaching, I feel really uncomfortable taking free lessons from Simone, but I’m saving up and I’ll send her back next fall, so please don’t worry. We love you! Come home safe—and soon!
I’ve left Willa without classes. It’s my fault. I hate money, I hate that ballet is so goddamned expensive. Willa loves it; she—and every kid who wants to—should be able to have a damn ballet class. It’s just dancing; it isn’t a pony or sleepaway rocket-launching camp. An empty room and record player are all that’s needed and they love it so much—
My stomach is burning. It is on fire. I’m getting an ulcer! There’s a hole in my stomach!
My face flushes and my heart races.
I compose an email to Simone.
>>>You need to call Hannah and get Willa back in class. She loves it, and she needs it. I’m sending the tuition. Please don’t ever tell Hannah. Just get Willa back there. And please get someone to help Lindsay teach.
Dad reports:
>>>I’ve seen more of this Owen kid than I have of your brother. They both come to Saturday breakfast. He asks a lot of weird stuff about you—what you were like as a little kid, what’s your favorite subject in school, do you and Luke really get along or secretly hate each other—is he vetting you for something? Please answer the guy’s letters and get him off my back!
And Mom says:
>>>Owen invited us to lunch at LucasArts last Friday, and guess who was in line behind me for burritos? GEORGE LUCAS! I asked if he knew your brother, and I told him about Luke being named for LUKE, you know, and George said that was “wonderful” and then we both ordered chicken burritos, and he went to get a yogurt from the cold case, and he turned around and said to me, “May the Force be with you…and Luke”! You could have knocked me over with a feather. Your brother was humiliated. Mike. Drop.
Oh God. Poor Luke.
I compose a new message.
>>>My Sweet Willster,
Please, please go back to class. It is so fun, and so good for you, and I asked Madame Simone to please get a helper for Lindsay. I will see you again. I promise.
Hurts my heart to write it. She may miss me, but I know for a fact I miss her more.
If the aurora was a sign, I still have no idea what it meant.
But I can’t worry about that right now, because I have to go call Western Union and wire money to the woman who ruined my life so she doesn’t ruin Willa’s life.
Winfly is coming. The months of dark cold are starting to wear on even the most senior Winter Overers. Every day people are getting more anxious and the hammocks in the greenhouse are all full of T3 zombies. I haven’t seen Shackleton in weeks. Allison’s pumping as much lettuce into the kitchen as she can, but it is never enough. Charlotte is in overdrive and dragging Vivian and me with her—and oddly, I think it is helping. I’m feeling more focused, no less confused about the shambles of my directionless life, but I’m not freaking out and panicked so much every second of the day anymore. We are working for a very specific goal. And Vivian and I have made it our mission to monitor Charlotte’s well-being and counteract the stress of finishing her thesis, to keep that baby where she’s supposed to be as long as she’s supposed to be there.
Of course, I’ve also decided to make myself insane by alternating spending time with Aiden and then having a date with Owen. One afternoon or evening, an icy snow walk beneath the star-filled and gradually but ever-brightening sky, watching the aurora and feeling small in the universe. The next night, me with the laptop in bed, reading in order the twenty-five (and counting) emails detailing my and Owen’s “dates.” And exchanging information about himself for stories he has gotten about me from Luke, or Mom or Dad.
>>>Today I helped your dad and Luke take the day-olds to the shelter in the Castro, and I got to hear all about how on your birthday and Christmas you always get a million handmade cards in your mailbox from the kids you take care of and your students. I love that you love little kids. Here’s my deal with them:
I think I told you my mom teaches preschool at the Wah Mei School in the Sunset? It’s in a church basement, and it’s the oldest Chinese/English bilingual school in San Francisco. When my parents came here from China, I was three, and they both worked full time, so they put me in Wah Mei. Every day from seven a.m. until six-thirty at night. Those are long hours for an adult; they’re even longer for a kid. Josie was already in first grade and she came after school, so we were both there till dinnertime. Then on Saturdays we had to go to Chinese school for three hours.
Okay, I’m going to nutshell this for you.
Where have I heard that before?
I’m at this little basement school all day, just a tiny concrete side yard to play in, and they were always putting on VHS tapes of Mister Rogers for us. And during naptime the teachers would watch Oprah when they thought we were asleep. So here’s what I was getting all day at preschool (day care—who are we kidding?):
• I am special because I am me, and there’s no one else like me.
• A fulfilling life means being independent, helpful, and kind.
• Always clean up after yourself.
• Crash diets don’t work. (Oprah)
• Chase fulfillment, not money. A right-sized life is the best life a person can have.
And then at home, I’m getting a slightly opposing viewpoint:
• Money is security.
• Charity begins and ends at home.
• Happiness is security, which is money.
• Family is the world and tradition is family.
• Don’t be lazy.
So I often found my worldview in quite a pickle. When I ditched school to work at Lucas, my parents were furious. I understand why. I was choosing a path that to them mean
t I would not have the best life I could, because to them, being a doctor meant secure money and prestige and oh, there’s the helping-people part. But hours and hours of those great American philosophers, Rogers and Winfrey, had gotten to me. I love my job. I make games that make people happy, which is a way to help, I think. Fun is important. I’m financially independent, I’m starting school again, part time this fall, to finish a degree in programming and design. I couldn’t have asked for a better life.
I like little kids, I think, because I remember so well what it was like to be one. I sympathize. Even in the best of circumstances it is often harder than a lot of people remember. I help my mom with the Wah Mei kids on field trips sometimes when I’ve got a day off. They’re fun, those little suckers.
I’m a complete mystery to my parents. But they love me. I love them. We just don’t talk about my day at work or the fact that I haven’t been to church in five years or that I might be in love with a white girl or that I drive a hybrid car because the emissions are lower, and then we’re able to have a great time together.
Good date. Sorry I talked so much. Fred Rogers says it’s good to share. And it’s thanks to Oprah I’m not intimidated by, instead ridiculously attracted to, smart women. Because I’m learning that you are, even more than I already knew.
Owen
PS: Please explain to your mom that George Lucas doesn’t know any of the employees at his company. It is a small city unto itself, and he couldn’t care less. Thanks a ton!
I am at a loss for any words that could even attempt to reciprocate the honesty, the smart, funny, impossible perfection of Owen’s letters. I start, again and again, wanting so badly to respond and then, embarrassed by the words I’ve written, delete them all. Not good enough. But silence is worse. What must he think of me?
And also, does this guy ever work? These emails, it’s like a novel every time! And also: He might be in love with a white girl.
In love.
“Might be. Interesting.”
Shackleton’s sitting on my bed. On top of my unfolded laundry.
Vivian is asleep in her bed—I watch her breathe. Even, slow.
“Hey,” I hiss. “What gives? This is my room! It’s completely inappropriate and not okay. You’re freaking me out.”
“That greenhouse is entirely too crowded lately.”
“Not cool, man.”
“That Owen’s a nice kid.”
I close the laptop.
“Probably wouldn’t ply you with liquor and encourage you to risk hypothermia for fun.”
“Aiden didn’t encourage…”
“I found a stowaway on Endurance after we’d sailed too far to turn back. Want to know what I said to him?”
“No.”
“You’ll be the first one we eat.”
I do not return his smile.
“Listen,” he says, “I forgot to tell a really good one.”
“Good one what?” I sigh.
“This one’s quick. I promise.”
“I’ll bet.”
“When Endurance was sinking, we knew we’d be traveling—whether it was ice floe or sled. We had to pack light, take as little from the ship as we could if we were to have any hope of finding land. Food and fuel were the utmost priority, followed closely by clothing.”
I close my eyes and settle in. He’s not going anywhere.
“But one of the purposes of the journey was to photograph the landscape. My photographer, Frank Hurley, was under contract with Kodak, and they’d given him all the plate glass negatives he wanted.”
“Glass?”
“Yes. The negatives were exposed on glass, and each photograph weighed several ounces. Frank had hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.”
“Thousands of pieces of glass.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“I told him we couldn’t possibly take them all—the sleds couldn’t bear the weight, and it would slow us down. He had to decide. I was his expedition leader and I forced him to choose which to take.”
“You give him a number, and he whittled it down?”
“He tried. He wanted to keep them all, and yes, they were all worthy. Every one magnificent. You’ve seen them, yes?”
I have. Mom’s got all the Frank Hurley coffee table books because our Scott is in a lot of the photographs. They are honestly magnificent. Shattered Endurance tilted precariously in the pack ice, sinking into the black water. The men playing football on the ice, the dogs. The James Caird out to sea, leaving the men behind on tiny Elephant Island.
“We piled every single negative on the ice one afternoon. I held one in each hand and told him he had three seconds to choose. Left or right. The one he pointed to went into a pile on a sled, the other I smashed on the ice.”
“No.”
“We completed three rounds of this and were left with the collection the world is familiar with today—culled by pure instinct, every one a masterpiece, a treasure.”
“You smashed works of art on the ice?”
“The poor man was paralyzed by indecision. But by the last round he completely trusted himself. He was fearless. He knew exactly which to keep; he saved the very best images. And his own life. All our lives, by not forcing us to wait for days while he agonized over an impossible choice. Trust your gut. It will save your life.”
“How will I know?”
“Do you trust Simone?”
“I don’t know.”
He stands.
“You’ll know when you stop asking.”
“Look, Rumpelstiltskin, can you please just say what you mean? In regular words?”
He shrugs. “My mind is yours, so the words are, too. You are my captain.”
“Harper?” Vivian mumbles, and rolls over to face me. “You okay?”
I rub my temples, close my eyes, and breathe.
“Sorry,” I say. “I talk in my sleep sometimes.”
“Okay.”
“Hey. Can we listen to your friend some more?”
“What friend?”
“The guy. About your town?”
“He’s not my…It’s two-thirty in the morning!”
“I know.” I pile the laundry into a basket, climb into bed, and pull the covers up under my chin. “Just for a little while?”
She puts her iPod in the dock, hits Play, and falls back on her pillow.
“Well,” the guy says, “it’s been another quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my hometown.”
Winfly is tomorrow. Beautiful, beautiful Winfly. Late August and the sun is creeping every day higher behind the mountaintops.
We’ve made it, Charlotte and Vivian and I and Her. Nearly. Practically. Maybe.
Charlotte’s anxious all morning at work. Two hundred Main Body staff will arrive on this flight, along with the mail and fresh food.
We’re busily working quietly, getting so close to finishing the analysis part of her thesis, and Charlotte says, “It’s going to be so crowded in the dining hall now. I’ll miss winter.”
“Oh, come on. You don’t even go in there anymore.”
“I like it when it’s just us. Winter people are a special breed. And this may be my last one.”
“Well. Now you’ll have your own little Winter.”
“Oooh, name her Winter,” Vivian says. “That’s way better than Nacreous.”
Aiden and I take our last Ob Hill winter climb before the crowds descend. All the way to the cross, so near the stars we could reach and touch them.
“I will never understand,” I say, my face to the sky, “How Shackleton navigated those tiny wooden boats across the ocean. Twice. In storms! How do you use celestial navigation with cloud cover?”
The stars are burning so bright tonight.
“He didn’t.”
“Yes, he did. What else would he use?”
“First of all, Shackleton wasn’t the one navigating. He was the expedition leader, smart enough to choose Frank Worsley as the captain; Worsley nav
igated. And I’ve no idea how he did, storms or not. Southern skies are impossible.”
“Why?” Stars so densely piled in the black they make a person swoon—how could they not lead the way?
“I’m telling you, in the Northern Hemisphere, Polaris, the North Star, marks the position of the north celestial pole—which just means it’s easy to orient yourself in the night sky, find True North. But the Southern Hemisphere has no Polaris.”
I feel a disorienting shift. “It doesn’t?”
“The south celestial pole—the imaginary point in the sky directly above the South Pole—there’s no especially bright, outshine-the-others star there. Or anywhere in the southern sky. So to celestially navigate, Worsley had to use constellations—Southern Cross, Centaurus—and measure them against one another’s distance, account for rotation…”
No path in The Ice. No guidance in the stars.
Why did I come here?
“The southern sky is beautiful,” Aiden says quietly. “But it will keep you lost if you don’t know your way around the stars.”
The ice and ocean and the night sky go on forever. I am lost. Still.
“Five weeks left,” Aiden says.
I nod.
“If you decide to go back to San Francisco, I’ll miss you,” he says.
“I don’t know where I’m going.”
“No?”
“No idea.”
“Well,” he says, “I was thinking. If you don’t go home…would you want to go home with me?”
“Home…to Ireland?”
“No! Home. Just…the world. Wherever we want.”
My breath slows.
“Three months. See how it feels. Then I’m off to Ireland for winter semester at university and you’ll…know more.”
This sky—these deceptive, aimless stars—will never be more beautiful than in this moment.
Up to This Pointe Page 22
